Before You Upgrade to Windows 10

You may know that you should do a bit of cleanup before and after you upgrade. I’m overdue on writing the post for the post Windows 10 upgrade.

But, here’s a new wrinkle. If you are upgrading from Windows 8, you may have more work to do.

There are a few ways to restore the Start menu in Windows 8. It became almost standard practice to install Classic Shell, or some other form of start menu restoration, to solve one of the biggest complaints about Windows 8 – which was, “Hey, where’s my start menu?!?!?” Insert damning commentary about Microsoft’s lack of understanding of real human beings here.

Microsoft’s insolence aside, if you did find a way to create a start menu with some add-on software, you’ll want to remove it prior to upgrading to Windows 10. In some cases, that add-on feature makes the start menu unusable after the upgrade. I know, it’s sickening, right?

Today, I spent hours trying to recover a computer from the malady that is a Windows 10 upgrade, whether you want it or not! I’ve seen several cases where the software installs itself, even though you’ve repeatedly clicked on the, “No, no, never!” response to Microsoft’s insistence.

Oh, and just in case you don’t follow me faithfully, please, please, PUH-LEASE! Back up your data right now. Back it up to the cloud if you can. But back it up on anything you have…. Your spinning hard drive will die. There’s no doubt about this. And, your Window 10 upgrade, if it makes your computer unusable, is pretty close to a hard drive failure. Just do it. Do it now.